The troop surge seems to have been a bit of a dud, looking at these numbers from globalsecurity.org.

2006 November: 152,000

2006 December: 140,000

2007 January: 132,000

2007 February: 137,000

2007 March: 142,000

2007 April: 150,000

2007 May: 155,000

2007 June: 162,000

It looks like we've really only managed to increase boots on the ground by 10,000 men. Not very impressive. But somehow, we've managed to REALLY increase the spending. In my previous post, I cited a Wall Street Journal article from March 8, 2006. It states:

We're spending $10 billion a month or $120 billion a year on 27.5 million people. That works out to $4,363.64 per person - which is pretty far off from my earlier flawed estimate of $5,116 per person. But hey - I was using a lower population number and trying to figure it out as proportionate to the number of troops on the ground.

The real GDP of Iraq is roughly 1/3 of what we are spending. Per capita, Iraqi's are only making ~$1500 USD per person - although this apparently has the buying power of $2900 using PPP.

It's interesting to look at the revenues and expenditures of the government. The entire GDP is only $40.66 billion, but they are SPENDING $41 billion. Some of this money is obviously coming from the United States.

One other interesting feature is the land area of 437K square kilometers. We currently have 1 soldier for every 2.7 square kilometers of area of the country. There are approximately 63 Iraqis in each of these square kilometers. We're spending $22,879 per square kilometer on the war effort.

You would think that by spending such an enormous amount of money that we'd somehow be able to keep inflation in check. Nope - it's running at almost 65%. Meaning that if you have $100 worth of Dinars in the morning, by the next day it's only worth $99.86. And it keeps compounding like this 365 days a year.

Given the amount of money spent, the time given, and the effort expended by the most powerful military on earth by far, I have come to the conclusion that we can not turn Iraq into a functioning country. The people simply don't want it to happen, or they'd be damned nearly rebuilt by now. The currrent low level civil war probably needs to be allowed to run it's course until the Iraqis are tired of fighting and are ready to settle down in peace.